The Curious Tales of Mr Mayhew and Mr Broker

The Curious Tales of

Mr Mayhew and Mr Broker

JP Tate

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Copyright © 2007 James Tate.

The right of James Tate to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted without the express permission of the author. All characters in this novel are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

ISBN-13: 978-1500865382 /  ISBN-10: 1500865389

Other Books by JP Tate

Fiction

The Most Hated Man

The Identity Wars: Utopia is Dystopia

Dutiful: a love story of consensual sadomasochism

An Exile’s Tread on Forbidden Soil: Warriors of the Iron Blade – Volume 1

No Brotherhood but that of Our Fathers: Warriors of the Iron Blade – Volume 2

A War for Generations Yet Unborn: Warriors of the Iron Blade – Volume 3

Non-Fiction

Feminism is Sexism

Sex-Objects: a little book of liberation

All God Worshippers Are Mad: a little book of sanity

Dedication

This book is dedicated to non-conformists, cultural dissidents, free-thinkers, the unorthodox and the independent-minded.

Contents

Chapter 01The Mirror

Chapter 02Sadie’s Triumph

Chapter 03The Man Who Wasn’t Nostradamus

Chapter 04Pig Squeal

Chapter 05Flush

Chapter 06Mr Wilber’s Decision

Chapter 07Lifeboat

Chapter 08The Drop

Chapter 09Cleo’s Rebellion

Chapter 10The Tully Machine

Chapter 11Adam / Eve

Chapter 12Mr Mayhew’s Murder

Chapter 1

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The book, its spine broken, lay upright and open on the mahogany table. Half a cup of very cold, scum-topped tea had been left carelessly on the open page, leaving a ring stain of three days vintage. Balanced on top of the tea cup was a non-matching saucer, which held the curling, rubberized remains of a ham and mustard sandwich. Mr Mayhew had a convenient habit of overlooking such trifling infractions of domestic order and a still more convenient conceit of feeling that they did not really matter.

He was a stone-white cadaverous relic with a blood circulation that didn’t always reach the extremities. It tried its best though. Mr Mayhew’s heart still pumped and his lungs still breathed, without any consultation on his preferences in the matter. Hairless as an alopecian apart from his bristling growth of scrubby beard, he was stoutly clothed in a thick cotton grandpa shirt under a lapelled waistcoat with serviceable baggy flannels and worn-through carpet slippers that still managed to conceal the holes in his thermal woollen socks. His aching back was propped up by double cushions as he lounged in his dilapidated armchair in a manner entirely contrary to the approved posture sanctioned by the office of health and safety. Their writ did not run here. Mr Mayhew was at home.

His guest, a portly figure in a heavy brown suit that was at least fifty years out of date, was half Mr Mayhew’s age but was catching up fast; having the old man’s example before him. This did not disturb the younger man in the least. His was a character intended for an era that had already passed before he’d had a chance to take his place in it. Yet he honoured its faded memory. Mr Broker was a deliberate anachronism of his own devising.

You promised me a new one today, he said.

Mr Broker came to the old man for the stories that were the source of his own, now quite respected, professional name. Admittedly, in a niche market. Mr Broker’s literary agents were pressing him for product. They wanted another in his long line of short prose on the oddities of problematic humanity. Little homilies of a sort. The old man kept him supplied with these stories, which Mr Broker then rewrote for a popular audience. Sermons from Mr Mayhew’s mount. Each was an offering of bread thrown expectantly upon the waters of public appetite. This, however, was not the full extent of Mr Broker’s relationship with the old man by any means.

Mr Broker was gratifyingly entrenched in staid middle-age and, although very far from anything that might be called affluence, at least he never went hungry. There was no risk of complacency. He did not wage open warfare upon society and neither had he withdrawn totally from it as the old man had so obviously done. Noticeably balding, and bearing the slothful fleshiness that accompanies a sedentary lifestyle, Mr Broker asked no more from his life than the absence of unwarranted worldly intrusion, not wishing to strain life’s limited resources.

Mr Mayhew had, in comparison, elevated the absence of worldly intrusion to something of an art. It was one of the personality traits that drew them together. It was also the reason the younger man had no fear of growing old, for he had never been young in anything but years. These days the only times he ever felt any last residue of comparative youth was when he was in the company of Mr Mayhew. God alone knew the old man’s age. He had been elderly, or at least had seemed so, when Mr Broker had been a boy. Neither the old man nor his rooms had apparently changed in all that time. They exhibited, now as then, a distress several shades darker than genteel poverty. Not that he was short of money, he never had been, he’d just measured out his spending carefully to ensure that it would last. He enjoyed his few pleasures but cared nothing for décor.

The most remarkable stopped clock in the old man’s sanctuary, however, was his dog Methuselah. For more than twenty years this malodorous brute must, to Mr Broker’s certain knowledge, have been prowling about the house, scratching both himself and the furniture, occasionally relieving himself in a few favoured corners, where the weak light of the table lamps which Mr Mayhew habitually used in preference to the overhead lights could not reach, when the old man neglected to let him out into the back garden. Methuselah had looked scabrous and decrepit two decades ago and he looked no different today.

In that earlier time of Mr Broker’s boyhood, in a society now laid to rest, when people were not more innocent but were surely less guilty, Mr Broker’s father had sought to discourage the boy’s interest in the old man’s company, fearing the worst of the elderly bachelor. Not for fear of paedophilia, a sexuality which had no media publicist in those days, but for fear of homosexuality which folk of his father’s generation conflated with it. The child Broker, precociously shrewd and remembering the great store that his elders professed to set by any educational influence on juvenile minds, had tried unsuccessfully to insinuate the old man into their good books by insisting that he was an ‘intellectual’.

You mean he’s a doddering old fool, the boy’s father had objected.

No, I mean an intellectual in inverted commas, clarified his son.

Best place to keep one, replied the father, who had always distrusted anyone who had pretensions to intellect, or indeed, who differed from himself in any way whatsoever.

But the father had not actually forbidden the boy from visiting the old man and so the friendship had been allowed the opportunity to develop. And, in truth, the relationship had always been wholly and unimpeachably nonsexual; even curiously distant. Mr Mayhew had treated the young Broker as an adult in a meeting of minds, and the boy had greatly preferred this to the infantilising attitude of his family to whom he was eternally a child. In conversation, he and Mr Mayhew were men together, without any societal encumbrances, and this meeting of equals was a pleasurable relief from other people’s cultural conventions; a sanctuary that Mr Broker had grown to value more and more as the years passed. Their ongoing dialogue had become central to the lives of both men.

In those far off days of adolescence, listening to the old man’s tall tales had been no more than a bizarre entertainment for an imaginative but ostracized child who was badly served by a school system that progressed at the pace of the slowest kid in the class. The young Broker had always been held back by the pious pedagogy of favouring those most in need. In contrast, Mr Mayhew’s tales had stretched a nimble young mind that was hungry for stretching, even if the boy didn’t really recognize the morals in the fables. Only later, when Mr Broker had matured enough to grasp the questions that the stories raised, did he think to turn this unusual personal alliance to his own financial advantage. He had built a satisfactory career as an author on the old man’s fund of fantasies.

Not that the old man knew. Nor would he care. The horizons of his concerns held only the ancient Methuselah, strong drink and stronger tobacco, a good English breakfast, jazz prior to 1960 which he played on vinyl, an unspoken shuddering abhorrence toward the things in the current social order to which he objected, of which there were very many, and his extraordinary yarns of which the supply seemed inexhaustible.

Promised, did I? said Mr Mayhew to his companion. That’s most unlike me.

He was right. It was. His sense of commitment was almost entirely personal and private; he did not commit himself to others often and when he did it was only ever to Methuselah or to Mr Broker. This was because he had a sense of honour, and that is something which is not to be trifled with.

Well, you must have one then, my dear, affirmed the old man.

Mr Mayhew had the kind of voice that always seemed to be laughing at some secret joke known only to himself; a voice that was both infuriating and engaging at one and the same time; a voice that could get a person heartily disliked. But not where Mr Broker was concerned. He knew the old man too well.

Mr Mayhew brushed dog hair off his lap in a futile gesture of opposition to Methuselah, whose project in life was to shed hair on any and all available surfaces that held still long enough. Wherever you sat in the old man’s apartments you sat on the discarded hair of the greying mongrel. Both Mr Mayhew and Mr Broker were extraordinarily fond of the pestilential beast.

Sustained by a tumbler of tawny port apiece and with the old man chewing vigorously on the stem of his calabash pipe with the remains of a once admirable set of tobacco-brown teeth, they were at home for the evening. Sitting comfortably, Mr Mayhew began recounting the story that Mr Broker would subsequently write and publish as The Mirror.

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The Mirror

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Her menstrual cycle was never late; her revolutions consistent. Sylvie’s much lauded biological function, no longer a curse but instead celebrated as all things female were celebrated, cogged and wheeled through its monthly rotation like clockwork. A source of pride rather than shame, as the matriarchs had taught her. She would wake to the expulsion of menses, and she always woke to it, with little inconvenience and no surprise. She was more reliable than the calendar. But not for much longer. Since making her decision she looked forward, intrigued, to the novel experience of its first unbloody non-arrival. It was a strange expectation and slightly tantalising.

The alarm clock purred but she was already awake. Needing less sleep than the average person, her nights were always longer than was necessary. Even so, cocooned in the foetal warmth of the duvet she would wait for the soft electronic buzzing before taking herself out of bed. Her morning routine seldom varied: twenty-five minutes in the bathroom, breakfast cereal, the radio telling her about the latest crop of abortive political machinations interspersed with uninteresting stories of human interest, mindlessly fatuous sports reports, pointless weather bulletins, and the plaintive appeal of news items from the we-matter-too arts, and then it was almost time to leave for work.

She spent a little time before the mirror, gazing unequivocally at her own reflection, content with what she saw looking back at her, swift fingers tidying everything into place, keeping the desired image intact. Her briefcase took rather longer, as mistakes here generated greater irritation and corrections were less easily effected. A glance at the digital quartz, then off to start her day proper.

Sylvie had always structured her life, but never to the point of a control fetish. She just made the effort to be efficient, that was all, not wasting time on inessentials unless she’d previously made time for inessentials. They had their place but it wasn't their place to be in the way, obstructively underfoot. Sylvie had made and paid her own way for long enough to have respect for both herself and those who did as much. Her self-esteem was justified and she had too little conceit to revel in it; she simply acknowledged it as her own.

The car took her through the usual wet traffic at the pace of a frequently interrupted snail. London in the first year of a brand new decade: 1990. The city was displaying both sides of the street. Expensive and squalid. Upwardly mobile and struggling to survive. Self-satisfied and dissatisfied. The rain-muffled engine ticking over steadily. No serious delays. She had her mind on the day ahead, driving carefully but not overcarefully. The radio time-check announced her on schedule. She swung into the dark entrance of the basement car park.

At thirty-one, she was in full possession of her own life and took some satisfaction in never having sought possession of anyone else’s. Exclusive access in sexual relationships, certainly, but never possession. The distinction was an important one to her. Serial monogamy without the colonialism of cohabitation. People weren’t property and they weren’t territory, at least they shouldn’t be.

All the same, it was another life that she had determined to lay claim to now, for she’d decided to have a baby. Sylvie wanted her, and it was the ideal time. As Sylvie saw it, she was young enough to be a mother, and mature enough to be a good one. She’d given time to getting her life settled, and now she could take a new direction. She’d looked into the financial side of things, naturally, and was confident that her income-management could be restructured successfully in accordance with her changed circumstances. Her employers were on board in principle and in practice, or so they declared in their mission statement, and Sylvie would see to it that they kept to their word. She’d already been in contact with various support services on that issue.

She strode across the concrete of the underground parking bays, through the pools of yellow light and grey-brown shadow, and stepped around the puddles of rain that inexplicably found their way indoors below ground. It was a depressing place, all hard lines and hard textures. No daylight. It was reasonably empty at this hour of the morning, just a few vehicles belonging to the early birds, the security people, and one or two overnighters. The cleaners all came to work by tube.

The lift took her up to the fourth floor. It was noticeable, anyway Sylvie noticed, that in this building, as in any which had a correspondence of professional status and floors, that as you ascended the carpeting improved. Sylvie had joined the company on the second floor, so she’d started above the linoleum level. The carpet on the fourth was good enough that you might want to have it in your own home.

She was quite often in first, if only by a few minutes. Sylvie wasn’t obsessive about her work; it was important but it wasn’t the world. It was just so much easier to arrive a little early, giving her more space in her day, than to spend the whole day chasing time. She didn’t enjoy that competitive pressure, that adrenaline rush which the boys in the office seemed to thrive on, and it wasn’t necessary to manufacture it through carelessness.

She’d given considerable thought to the reorganisation of her work commitments, deciding that the planned new duality in her life could be managed well enough with maternity leave and flexitime. The crèche here, a very necessary addition of only a couple of years previously, was staffed by extremely good people. She’d spoken to them already, but without revealing any personal interest. Office gossip she could do without.

She didn’t want to job-share as it meant a loss of personal control and a dependence on someone else in matters that reflected directly upon herself. Sylvie could be a team player, indeed she preferred it in many ways, but she liked to have her own role clearly delineated. She believed in demarcation and individual responsibility. She’d been told by feminist friends that she believed in these things too strongly, but it worked for her and when it came right down to it you had to make your own value-judgements.

Her social commitments would have to be pretty much sacrificed, of course, what with work and the baby. But that was nothing, really. No one could expect to have everything. It was infantile to make such a demand upon life, although many did. You made choices. You gave up one thing for something else. She and the baby would do fine. Her salary was sufficient. The house had a garden. Sylvie had the love to give. Now was the perfect time. Her daughter would be perfect. Everything was just as it should be.

She ticked off confirmations on her desk planner for today. Only two queries. Otherwise straightforward. For amusement she flicked through her diary counting months. Easter would be a good time to bring a life into the world. That would require conception in August this year. Those pages were blank since that was her usual time for her annual holiday. Perfect again. But no holiday this year. Something much more important. Slowly she wrote in a large letter D on the pages for the first week of August. Her pen was poised to add a question mark. Then, in a moment of decision, she added a large firm tick.

She had thought it through last night and had finally decided upon David as the biological father. She needed the means to impregnate herself but that was all. She didn’t want to take the clinical route, with some anonymous donor's frozen spermatozoa being defrosted like the genetic, procreative equivalent of microwave food. She didn’t consider herself a romantic exactly, who could afford that, but she wasn’t so wholly disinterested as to prefer not to meet the father in person. At least to know more about him on a personal level than some official documentation. The person in personality mattered.

She could manage things okay with David. He was a nice guy as they went. He was smart, tall, and quite pretty. And just irresponsible enough to be useful. The last thing she needed right now was safe sex. David didn’t sleep around. In fact the office gossip was that he was usually short of a partner. Which made him less attractive but more suitable. She wasn’t going to pick some male slut who was anybody's. David wasn’t a pussy-chaser, but Sylvie knew that with a little careful manipulation she could have him if she wanted him.

She wouldn’t tell him, before or after, that he was the father, or that her pregnancy was deliberate. She could cope without any financial help from him and she didn’t want him thinking that he had any claim on her child. Besides, she didn’t want to get herself involved in an unnecessary and irrelevant relationship. It would be simple enough to tell him she’d made a silly mistake with someone else, and that although she wanted nothing to do with the guy, she had decided to keep the baby. That was half true, after all, and half-truths made the best lies. David wouldn’t question her word and, in any case, he would probably be relieved to be told the child wasn’t his biological responsibility. She doubted he was strong enough really to take on any serious commitment.

Sylvie’s child was to be hers alone. There couldn’t be, mustn’t be, any question of that. She wanted a child. She could, and would, have her. It would not be a problem. At least, nothing she couldn’t handle. Sylvie could control it all.

By the time the others, the time-chasers, started to arrive at work, Sylvie had set up the essentials for her morning’s paperwork, and was thinking of a short break for coffee. When David eventually arrived, a little flustered at almost being late but looking attractively boyish and very fashionably American Gigolo in an Armani slouch suit, Sylvie flashed him a big smile over her plastic coffee cup.

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Sharnaz had cancelled their cinema date for tonight. She’d phoned Sylvie just before close of business. Her husband, Denzil, had been forced to work late and that meant Sharnaz was housebound with their children for the evening. He was hanging on to a job they needed so there was no getting around it. It might just as easily have been Sharnaz stuck at the office and Denzil at home. They had a relationship that worked. They couldn’t afford to lose her job either, and these days you had to keep up with your competition if you wanted to still have a life in five years time. It was easier to keep up than to catch up.

Sylvie was impressed with the way they worked it out between them, balancing two careers, one marriage, and three children, one from Sharnaz’ previous relationship. They seemed to find room for everything, as far as she could tell, and Sharnaz was fairly open in conversation. Sharnaz was the only one Sylvie had told about her decision. Each was a confidante for the other, and both could be trusted to be considerate of the other’s feelings whilst still being honest. Sylvie got on well with Denzil, too, and the three of them would dine together on a fairly regular basis, although usually at home because of the children. Their married set-up was okay; better than okay. It wasn’t what Sylvie wanted for herself but it was, perhaps, the next best thing. While it lasted. Even the best of relationships is on the clock.

It wasn’t the first time that Sharnaz had cancelled on her at the last minute on their cinema night, but it wasn’t a problem. There was no reason why a woman couldn’t go out for the evening alone. All that ‘take back the night’ stuff wasn’t Sylvie’s idea of feminism. She’d read the research. For women, it was the home that was the real danger zone. But not for Sylvie. Nor for Sharnaz. Not yet for Sharnaz.

With the recent recession-busting resurgence of cinema attendance the corporate owners had done up the local, which had previously been no more than functional, to resemble something like the modern multiplex version of the Hollywood picture palace of long ago. It wasn’t quite the full plush red velvet, but a reasonable facsimile in modern textiles. Better than expected in a contemporary setting, and way ahead of what it had replaced. Not everything gets worse, whatever the whingers and whiners might claim.

It now had five screens, which allowed for the presentation of films other than the usual Neanderthal flexings of some monosyllabic, emotional retard destroying small armies of extras in high-tech, vainglorious, slow-mo. That kind of stuff still got the main screens, of course, it had the audience. In all the times she’d been here she’d never been to any other screens but numbers four and five, the smallest, but at least there was room for a little choice now. Others got a look in. They even, very occasionally, got subtitles. Unheard of.

Sylvie arrived on time, so there was no groping about in the dark. And no confectionery either. Why was it that people couldn’t watch a film without loudly masticating their little oral comforters?  Was it some habitual obeisance to tradition, or just a reaction to the intimidating presence of faceless strangers in the darkness? It wasn’t just the distraction of the noise that bothered her. All those rustling crisp and sweetie packets, and the state-welfared, fluoride-strengthened, calcium-enriched teeth, mightily crunching munchies, the wet lips sucking greedily on the straws provided, plughole slurping the dregs of their liquid goo. No, it wasn’t just the noise. It was the all-pervasive, over-sweet smell of popcorn and fake orange juice, the mixture of choc-ice and ketchup, that could hang in the air and really ruin a night at the pictures. Her enjoyment of a film depended largely upon its ability to create an emotional mood, and that sticky, sugary smell competed with the atmosphere of the film.

And tonight’s film was one she’d been looking forward to, The Handmaid’s Tale, based on the Atwood novel. Sylvie had read the book when it was first published in ’85. It had deservedly won numerous awards and Sylvie had thought it brilliant. She would have been interested in